Wednesday, April 16, 2014

‘Libertarians’ Call for Pre-Emptive War Against Russia

By Daniel McAdams

Readers may remember Eglė Markevičiūtė. She is the Lithuanian member of the International Executive Board of the Students for Liberty (SFL) who co-wrote, with SFL president Alexander McCobin, an embarrassingly error-riddled attack on Ron Paul over his opposition to US intervention in Ukraine. She is also part of the Young Voices network, which has been recognized for its work by the National Endowment for Democracy, the US government funded regime change organization.

Well Markevičiūtė is back and the mask has dropped. In a recent Daily Caller article, titled, appropriately enough, “Military intervention is the only solution to Russia’s aggression,” she calls for the US to launch a pre-emptive war against Russia. She is sick of the US refusal to fight Ukraine’s battles and her own. “The Western world’s lack of military action only encourages Putin’s regime,” she pouts, channeling her inner Jennifer Rubin.

All the kids on the liberty block should embrace the George W. Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war, avers the Lithuanian liberty activist:

Limited military presence, such as an increased NATO presence in the Baltic States and Poland or troop deployment in Ukraine, is something that liberty-minded individuals should reconsider as a preventive measure to stop the spread of Putin’s conquests further into Eastern Europe.

Because nothing says liberty like robbing the American taxpayer to fight your battles. Nothing says liberty like mainlining more trillions into the veins of the US military-industrial complex. Nothing says liberty like the total destruction of a World War III. Peace and prosperity are for losers. To Markevičiūtė and her cohorts, sometimes you just have to force liberty on the rest of the world at the barrel of a gun.

For all her tough talk, it appears Markevičiūtė is quite unlikely to herself put in any time in the military. That is a job for the Americans, apparently.

Like most of the new NATO member countries, she views membership in what once was the Western alliance not as a means by which to resolve old conflicts, but rather to punch above her nation’s class, as a puny kid who finds “courage” in a muscled new friend willing to defend her increasingly provocative actions.

NATO expansion was always a bad idea, but when you have people like Poland’s foreign Minister Radek Sikorski — a former employee of the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute — urging Ukraine to provoke Russia, and Lithuania’s Markevičiūtė breathing heavily for a US pre-emptive strike on Russia, it is more than obvious that it was a colossally stupid idea that may have earth-changing ramifications.

Actual non-interventionist Justin Raimondo recently challenged another Students for Liberty board member to clarify whether advocating pre-emptive war was not a rather less than libertarian position to take, but the response was again disappointingly limp: “it’s a big tent org and my role isn’t ideological enforcement.” Apparently you can be a neocon and still be a liberty activist. The liberty label starts to become meaningless.

The Students for Liberty organization is so dedicated to promoting liberty overseas that they are willing to promote it by stealth — or by stealth bomber! Nothing says liberty like a cruise missile headed to your village…

4 comments:

-- [...][S]he [ Eglė Markevičiūtė] calls for the US to launch a pre-emptive [sic] war against Russia. --

Wasn't Hitler's invasion of Russia in 1941 a "preemptive" attack as well? We all know how that one turned out.

This person is clearly not familiar with the concept of "mind your own business". She also completely ignores the role that the U.S. State Department and the CIA has played in trying to turn the Ukraine into a client-state, as clear a provocation as you can have that would make any Russian politician worth his (or her) salt angry as hell.